Fair Game

The county fair is the setting for Annette Dashofy’s mystery Fair Game. It is part cozy and part police procedural. Fair Game is a page turner with two murders and several viable suspects. Complications keep arising as EMT and deputy coroner Zoe Chambers has duty at the county fair where she is also showing her quarter horse. Some of the crimes occur in neighboring jurisdictions so her boyfriend Pete Adams, police chief in Vance Township, Pennsylvania, as well as several other law enforcement colleagues are called in.

Threads include 4-Hers, a family with a child in rehab due to a horse accident, Zoe and Pete’s romantic relationship, abusive boyfriends, teenagers attracted to the carnival, and a school bus demolition derby. Zoe tends to see the best in people and her intuition sometimes gets her in trouble. She is smart, fearless, and caring and those characteristics make her a heroine you will root for. Chief Pete Adams, a thorough investigator who loves Zoe and is supportive of her and her passion for horses and her work. He wants the best for her as she struggles to overcome a less than perfect past.

I would like to extend my thanks to Edelweiss and to Henery Press for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 5/5

Category: Mystery

Notes: 1. #8 in the Zoe Chambers Mystery Series, but can be read as a standalone.

  2. There was more bad language in this book than is usual in a cozy or than I prefer, but not enough to preclude me from reading more by this author.

Publication:   May 14, 2019—Henery Press

Memorable Lines:

Before Zoe could ask anything else, he spun and trudged away in the head-down, slouched posture of one used to dodging emotional bullets.

Close enough that Zoe could smell the stale sweat on her clothes, the alcohol on her breath, and the anger radiating from her soul.